My great-great-great-great-great grandfather (i.e. five greats) Francis Stainthorp (1765-1822) and five-greats grandmother HannahnéeWaring (1768-1836) are buried in the churchyard of All Saints Church, Rudby-in-Cleveland, in the north-east corner of the North Riding of Yorkshire, about nine miles south of Middlesbrough.1

My Stainthorp ancestors lived in the adjoining village of Hutton Rudby from at least the early 1600s until c.1890.2 Our surname derives from the former market town of Staindrop, across the River Tees from Hutton, in County Durham. The placename matches Old Norse steinn + þorp meaning the ‘stony’ settlement or farmstead, or one belonging to a Dane named Steinn,3,4 but is probably a Scandinavianization of an underlying Old English placename stǣner (‘stony’) + hop (‘valley’).5 Staindrop is spelt Stainthorp or -thorpe on some eighteenth-century maps and gazetteers.6,7 The manorial district around the village was anciently known as Staindropshire.8 A Gilbert de Steyndrope, goldsmith and sheriff, was recorded in London in 1346.9

The market town of Stainthorp (Staindrop), in “A Map of the BISHOPRICK of DURHAM North from London” by T. Badeslade and W.H. Toms, 1742.

The local history society in Hutton Rudby have transcribed the parish records for All Saints:2 despite dozens of Stainthorp burials recorded in Rudby over two centuries, Francis’s is the only one of my ancestor’s graves marked with a headstone.10 The memorial inscription is very well preserved and reads:

“Sacred
TO THE MEMORY OF
FRANCIS STAINTHORP,
who died July the 19th, 1822;
Aged 57 Years.
ALSO
JANE his First Wife,
who died June the 17th, 17[95?];
Aged 31 Years.
ALSO OF
HANNAH his Second Wife,
Who died August the 14th, 1836;
Aged 68 Years.”

Francis Stainthorp, the only? son of Robert Stainthorp (d. 1820?) and MargaretnéeWilchinson (d. 1771), was baptised at Rudby parish church on 10th March 1765.2 He became a linen weaver – hand-loom weaving at home was the traditional occupation in Hutton, which was at the centre of the Cleveland linen industry, processing Baltic flax brought into the Tees ports.1,11 The village was also notorious for its connections to smuggling:

Francis married twice and had a total of ten children.2 Of those ten, three died in early childhood and the parents re-used their forenames for subsequent births. (This seems odd today but was not uncommon in the early nineteenth century.13 I have used Roman numerals I, II and III to distinguish the births below.)

On 23rd May 1786, Francis married Jane Kendale at Rudby All Saints.2,14 They had three children:

John I, died in infancy

Margaret (b. 9th March 1791)

Jane (baptised 9th February 1794)

Francis’s wife Jane died in 1795 aged just 31 and he married Hannah Waring on 14th April 1798.2,15,16 Hannah and Francis had a further seven children:

In 1807, the 42-year-old Francis Stainthorp’s name and occupation were recorded in the county poll book for that year’s election to the House of Commons of the two county MPs for Yorkshire – the so-called “Knights of the Shire”.18 Francis had the vote, pre-Reform Act, becaue he was a freeholder resident in the liberty of Langbaurgh (the wapentake which included Hutton Rudby). This was no secret ballot: how each man voted was recorded and published. Francis’s candidate—the incumbent anti-slavery MP William Wilberforce—retained his seat.19

As his gravestone inscription records, Francis Stainthorp senior died on 19th July 1822 at the age of 57; he was buried two days later in the churchyard at Rudby All Saints, where his bones presumably still lie.2,10

In his will, written on 21st January 1822, and proved at the Exchequer Court of York later the same year, Francis left a considerable amount of property to his wife, five surviving daughters (Hannah, Mary, Ann, Margaret and Jane) and sons Francis and John. The will mentions several houses in Hutton occupied by tenant weavers, two acres of land, an orchard, “farming stock, Implements of Husbandry, and stock in Trade… Household goods, furniture, plate, linen and china“, and sums of money to be given to each of his children. A copy of the will is held on microfilm at the Borthwick Institute for Archives in York;20 the will is also summarised and the estate valued in the death duty registers held at the National Archives.21

“I give to my said Wife for her own use
absolutely the Cow now in my possession…”
— excerpt from Francis Stainthorp’s will.20

After his death, some of Francis senior’s property in Hutton—consisting of two houses with a garden, orchard, [work]shop & stable—was bought by David Hebbron, a butcher.22 Francis’s elder son, Francis, lived to 78 and was one of the last hand-loom weavers in the village.23 Francis junior and his wife Ann Seamer had three sons of their own in the 1830s,2 though all but the youngest died in childhood.24,25

Section of Francis Stainthorp’s will, held in the Borthwick Institute in York

Francis junior’s third son Charles Stainthorp (1835-1905) and grandson William (1862-1924) became butchers, after the industrial revolution brought cheap imported linen to Britain and put paid to cottage hand-loom weaving in north-east Yorkshire. Ironically one of the last uses of Hutton Rudby home-spun linen was to make blue apron material for butchers like Charles and his descendants.26

After a series of family and financial tragedies in the 1870s and ’80s, Charles and William Stainthorp both left the North Riding and moved their families to what would later become the metropolitan area of Tyne and Wear. William’s youngest child: my great-grandfather Henry Harland (Harry) Stainthorp, was born in Sunderland in 1904. He carried on the Stainthorp family butchering business on Tyneside, succeeded by his own eldest son: my grandfather, who ran a butcher’s shop in Whitley Bay until he retired in 1986.

There were no (living) Stainthorps left in Hutton Rudby by the end of the nineteenth century.

Hutton Rudby and District Local History Society. Handwritten transcriptions from the registers of the parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entries for ‘Stainthorp’ and related spellings. Copy in the possession of Paul Harland Stainthorp (paul@paulstainthorp.com).

Badeslade, Thomas and Toms, William H. ‘A map of the Bishoprick of Durham north from London.’ In: Chorographia Britanniæ: or, a new set of maps of all the counties in England and Wales, etc… 1742.

Camden, William. Britaine, or, a chorographicall description of the most flourishing kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland. London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610. Transcription by Dana F. Sutton, 14th June 2004. A Vision of Britain Through Time. http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Camden/27#pn_9 (accessed 14th October 2014).

Sharpe, Reginald R. (editor). Calendar of letter-books preserved among the archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall: letter-book F, 1337-1352. Folios cxxi-cxxx, pages 143-156. London: John Edward Francis, 1904. British History Online. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33540 (accessed 14th October 2014).

Pierson, Thomas. Roseberry Topping: a poem (originally published 1783): with notes, and also a notice of the author and a memoir of the late Thomas Jennett. Edited by John Walker Ord. Stockton: Jennett & Co., 1847. Google Books. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HbksAQAAMAAJ (accessed 14th October 2014).

Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the marriage of Francis Stainthorpe and Jane Kendale, 23rd May 1786.

Diocese of York. Bishop’s transcripts. Parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the marriage of Francis Stainthorpe and Hannah Waring, 14th April 1798.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Transcription from the registers of the parish of Rudby-in-Cleveland. Entry for the marriage of Francis Stainthorpe and Hannah Waring, 14th April 1798. Genealogical Society film number: 918436. FamilySearch. https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/NKBD-X5W (accessed 14th October 2014).